Comments

I’ve never tested on dried material…I don’t think. The question keeps coming up, and I’m surprised to think that I never tried it. I must have, but I don’t remember.

For the folks that were on the distribution list for a recent email about KOH testing, here’s a copy of the jottings:

………….snip………..

Thanks to David Tulloss, www.amanitaceae.org now has a very useful function for the authors and editors. We can now specify spore comparisons between species and not need to re-edit the comparison when new data is added regarding the spores of one of the compared species. Now sporographs in discussion data fields will be automatically updated just like the sporographs in the basidiospore data fields.

To see how the results can be useful, I suggest taking a look at the technical tabs on these two taxon pages:

Especially note the latter because the comparison of spore data shows why KOH spot testing of possible ocreata specimens can save a future time reviewing specimens that MIGHT be white phalloides or MIGHT be ocreata.

Also, for BAMS members who have contributed Limacella specimens in recent years, take a look at the sporograph comparisons of taxa similar to Limacella sp-Burnett-5-xi-1994 on the techtab of this page:

In this case, it looks like there are two potential names for Burnett’s collection…even raising the possibility that the two poorly known names might be synonyms.

I really look forward to more interesting results of using the sporograph tools to play with the accumulated data.

It’s important to remember that spore size and shape are not the only or (in some groups) even a major determining factor in species determination in Amanita. I’m emphasizing what we are able to do with the data in terms of its self-updating graphical display…NOT trying to oversell the importance of spore size and shape in taxonomy.

of course you may use any of my pictures!
Do you think this cap is mature enough, with the annulus still covering the gills? If not, I can find more of these later. On the other hand, these amanitas usually keep growing a bit after they’ve been picked..

We have an extremely humid kind of weather right now, but I’ll do what I can to get the collections dry (have kept fulva too, but forgot to mark “Herbarium specimen available”)..